Bill de Blasio’s ‘Vision’ Shrinks as His Re-election Campaign Begins

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York vowed on Tuesday to cut the homeless population, now about 60,000, by 2,500 over five years.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

For much of his first three years in office, Mayor Bill de Blasio presented his policies as “transcendent,” the gains of his administration as “historic” and the seemingly entrenched problems of urban life as fixable — if only those around him in New York would share his vision and level of commitment.

But as Mr. de Blasio begins his campaign for re-election this year, his tone has become markedly more modest, and his trumpet more of a pennywhistle.

The ambitions of Mr. de Blasio’s progressive government, once richly grandiose in his promises to unite a city starkly divided along economic lines, have become grounded — both by the stark realities of governance, and politics.

Nowhere has the shift been in greater evidence than in Mr. de Blasio’s promise, on Tuesday, to reduce the city’s ballooning homeless shelter population, which now stands around 60,000, by a mere 2,500 people over five years — less than 1 percent a year, on average.

He said that he could not even contemplate an end to homelessness, only a world in which the situation was managed in a better and more cost-effective way, with the gains marked by “incremental progress.”

The talk of vision was still there — one of the mayor’s favorite words, used six times in the 55-minute speech he gave on Tuesday — but the plan he announced was far less sweeping.

The shift has, for months, become evident, in Mr. de Blasio’s more tempered approach to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat but a frequent foil, and in his dismissal of calls from progressive groups to close the Rikers Island jail complex, which he called a “noble idea” but one that is too expensive.

His State of the City address last month was also characterized by a lack of big ideas and a preference for incremental progress.

“Even the mayor of New York has to reflect the changing political culture,” said Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University. The mayor’s shelter plan, he said, “reflects what is now unfortunately the growing recognition that we can’t solve the problem of homelessness, we have to find a way to manage the homeless in better settings.”

The mayor said during a news conference on Wednesday that the modest number reflected a “sober” analysis of the challenge, a calculation that he said took place before each of his administration’s promises.

“I don’t think it’s a shift to pragmatism,” Mr. de Blasio said. “I think we’ve been very pragmatic on all of our numerical goals.”

But the homelessness plan reflected an evolution of the mayor’s thinking about the crisis, which even as late as July 2015 he was reluctant to acknowledge was occurring.

“Homelessness is not going up, thank God,” Mr. de Blasio said then at a news conference, disputing the idea that the problem had grown more visible as “factually wrong.” The mayor added that he then felt it was “largely a mental health challenge.”

By Tuesday, it was clear that the mayor had moved beyond that thinking, presenting a 128-page plan that underscored the complex effects of housing affordability, stagnant wages, economic opportunities, city outreach efforts and government subsidies on the number of New Yorkers who fall into homelessness. (The plan followed another, released in April 2016, that promised no fixed numerical goal for reducing the city’s shelter population.)

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Rather than an evolution in governing style, though, some observers said the mayor’s plan could be read as a purely political gambit aimed at neutralizing a potential liability as he faces re-election.

“In an election year, there is no practical; just political,” said Evan Thies, a Democratic political consultant. “In this case, though, the practical decision and the political one happen to be the same thing.”

“The new plan is clearly the result of the mayor and his team coming to grips with the fact that the homeless issue could be an Achilles’ heel going into a fall re-election bid,” Mr. Thies added, “and that they’ve run out of time to claim a big, quick turnaround was possible.”

In a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday, 96 percent of voters surveyed said that homelessness was a serious problem. And 55 percent of those polled said they disapproved of the way Mr. de Blasio was handling poverty and homelessness, while 36 percent said they approved.

For a mayor who often revels in big, round numbers, proposing to reduce the homeless shelter population by 500 a year certainly presented a contrast to other major policy promises. He has pledged to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing, to create 100,000 new private-sector jobs, both over 10-year periods, and to outfit every city patrol officer in the nation’s largest police force with a body camera by the end of 2019.

Steven Banks, the commissioner of the Department of Social Services, said that in some years, the shelter population may even increase because of stepped-up efforts to get homeless people off the streets or other factors, but that by the end of the five-year period the reduction will be achieved.

Mr. de Blasio’s plan also calls for creating about 90 additional homeless shelters over the next five years, while phasing out the use of hotel rooms and rental apartments, often in poorly maintained buildings, as stopgap housing for the homeless.

“It’s a good beginning, but it’s not enough because it doesn’t address homelessness per se,” said Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, a former deputy mayor in charge of social services under Mr. de Blasio, referring to the creation of more shelters. “It doesn’t go far enough in terms of addressing the problem.”

The extent of Mr. de Blasio’s reduced vision on homelessness was physically represented by the setting of his policy announcement on Tuesday, which was billed as a speech and was delivered to a group of a few dozen people, largely social service executives and journalists.

“We’re blessed in this city that we could fill a room with so many people” who have dedicated their lives to helping people in need, he said during the address.

It was not a very large room.

“Is it a gloryful goal? Is it everything we want it to be?” he said of his plan. “No. It’s the honest goal.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 2, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Vision Shrinks as Mayor Aims for Re-election. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe